Old PDA Software?

[NateM]

WARNING: THIS IS KINDA LONG-WINDED:

Hello everyone,

Got a bit of a stumper for y'all. Recently, I got the itch to ditch my old Chinese electronic dictionary in favor of a PDA with Plecodict or something like that. After a bit of searching and a posting on craigslist, someone contacted me about buying a PDA smartphone. I suspected it was kind of fishy, as they were offering me this phone for $150 U.S. I figured someone probably either stole it, desperately needed money for drugs, didn't actually have that phone, or some combination of the above.However, I went to go and check it out anyways.

When I got there, they actually had the device, and it was the same one I linked to before, so that ruled out the 3rd option. Options one and two are probably still pretty likely explanations, especially given the fact that the phone came with no accessories and no stylus. That didn't stop me from buying it, though. I figured it was probably better off in my hands than theirs.

Anyways, as I was getting ready to leave with it, they threw in ANOTHER PDA for free. It's a significantly older model, a Casio Cassiopeia E-125 that runs on Windows CE 3.0, but for free I figured I might as well take that off their hands too, if for no other reason than to sell it on ebay and recoup some of the costs for the PDA phone.

So here I sit with two PDA's. I'm probably going to get Plecodict for the new one as soon as my memory card arrives in the mail. Now I need to figure out what to do with the 2nd one.

I was originally going to sell it on ebay, and give/sell my electronic dictionary to a friend of mine that's helped me out with studying and who really seems to want one of these things. However, I think I just lost my electronic dictionary, (I'm a substitute teacher and I think I left it in the class I was teaching last week), and so if I can't get that back I was wondering if it would maybe be feasible to convert this old PDA into an electronic dictionary. Looking at Plecodict, I noticed that it runs on WM2003 or higher, so that kind of rules that out as an option. I was wondering if anyone knows of anything older that might work? Perhaps an earlier version of Pleco, or another software? I didn't really know where to look, so I was wondering if there were any old-timers in here who might know what to use for that. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[gato]

See if these work:

http://www.octopus-studio.com/product.en.htm

MDict is a multi-language dictionary under WinCE for PDAs, it dosen't provide dictionary data itself, but use libraries built by user.

http://www.chinese-forums.com/showthread.php?p=62529#post62529

Inputting Chinese on PocketPC

[ange9s]

That site doesn't list the manufacturer of the phone or how much internal memory it has, but with the expansion slot, it should be able to handle Plecodict. Is this an unlocked GSM phone or are you just planning on using it as a PDA? I couldn't imagine Tianjin is in Quest's coverage area (since a good part of the US isn't), but with the hard keyboard it should work really well for using Pleco, which will be much more useful than your current electronic dictionary, no matter which one you have.

[NateM]

That site doesn't list the manufacturer of the phone or how much internal memory it has, but with the expansion slot, it should be able to handle Plecodict. Is this an unlocked GSM phone or are you just planning on using it as a PDA? I couldn't imagine Tianjin is in Quest's coverage area (since a good part of the US isn't), but with the hard keyboard it should work really well for using Pleco, which will be much more useful than your current electronic dictionary, no matter which one you have.

Sorry, I should have been clear. I bought these in Minnesota. The Qwest phone I'm not worried about. I am just going to use it as a PDA, (I can't afford the kind of phone plan that would actually be able to take advantage of it's features, anyways). It's an Audiovox PPC-6700, and it has 64mb Ram, WM 5.0, etc. I'm fairly certain I'll be able to get Pleco to run on this.

The one I was asking about though was the Casio, (this one), which I'm hoping to give/sell to a friend to use as an e-dictionary. It runs on Windows CE 3.0, which I understand won't work with Plecodict. So I was wondering if anyone knew about programs in use from way back then, (2000,2001), that might be able to work, and if they are still available anywhere.

[roddy]

Perhaps this? - a quick glance seems to suggest the specs will handle it.

[NateM]

Not to be hyper demanding or anything, but has anyone been able to find another product besides pleco which features handwriting recognition? That's the nice thing about my e-dictionary, even though it only gives voiced pronunciation in the definition, (no pinyin).

[NateM]

Has anyone ever used this? Looks like it might do the trick in combination with dictionary software. Pretty pricey, though, probably just better off buying a Palm or WM2003 device and plecodict.

Edit: Actually, this:

http://www.mobem.com/products/cestarold.php

...seems to be the same product and is only $25. There is also a dictionary with it that also seems to work relatively well. I've tested this on the lower end PDA and it worked flawlessly.

[mikelove]

One slightly roundabout solution would be to run the Palm OS version of PlecoDict in Styletap, which is a Palm OS emulator for Pocket PC (and supports PPC 2002 and 2000). It's available at http://www.styletap.com/. The main problem is that you'd then have to pay to upgrade to the Pocket PC version of PlecoDict if you ever got a newer Pocket PC, and you'd have to deal with the less-than-attractive 1.5x resolution Chinese fonts.

I have to admit it's a little embarrassing that our Pocket PC version won't work on PPC 2002 but our Palm OS version will, but I guess in this as in all things we can Blame Microsoft®.

[NateM]

I'm not too worried about it. This old PDA is probably going to a friend of mine anyway. I'm pretty sure I'll be springing for Pleco as soon as my 1gb memory card arrives later this week.